Could Dhivehi ladies become Arab women in the near future?

As the number of mullahs increase and people are swayed by their rhetoric, women are being covered, hidden and marginalized. The once proud Dhivehi woman is losing her place as an equal partner and a leader in society and entering into the role prescribed by Islam and the Arab way of life. No surprise there - a woman under Islam is an object, a property to be used and discarded at whim.

• Sura (2:223) - "Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will..." Wives are to be sexually available to their husbands in all ways at all times. They serve their husbands at his command. This verse is believed to refer to anal sex (see Bukhari 60:51), and was "revealed" when women complained to Muhammad about the practice. The phrase "when and how you will" means that they lost their case.

• Sura (4:34) - "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them."

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Saudi women had more rights at the time of the Romans than today

Arab women had more rights at the time of the Romans than they have today. At that time, in fact, their capacity to conduct their own economic affairs was recognised, which is not true in Saudi Arabia today. This is maintained by a female Saudi scholar, Hatoon al-Fassi, in a book entitled "Women In Pre-Islamic Arabia", published by British Archaeological Reports.

Barred from teaching at King Saud University in 2001, the scholar has examined the situation of Nabataea, a kingdom that at the beginning of the Christian era included parts of modern-day Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and had its capital in Petra. Here, Fassi maintains, women were able to conduct business, without even the form of "protection" required by Greek tradition in these matters. In her opinion, it is precisely because of the lack of understanding on the part of Islamic scholars of the influences of Greco-Roman legislation on sharia that the limited rights and freedoms for women have arisen.

"We now live the worst status imaginable": this statement from Fawziya al-Oyouni, a women's rights activist, is reported in the review of the book on Middle East Online, which highlights how, when religious authorities, ministers, and businessmen met last month in Riyadh to discuss work for women, there were no women visible, because they were confined to another room, and the men were able only to hear them.

With thanks to Asia News